John R. Houk, Blog Editor
© April 21, 2025
When I first ran into the headline Pope Francis had passed away on the Monday morning after Easter, I did a Duck-Duck-Go search to get some confirmation.
I realize it is in bad taste to speak ill of the dead. I also realize there are good Roman Catholics dedicated to the Papacy no matter the personal character of the individual installed in that selection process.
Yet, by religious persuasion I’m a Protestant. AND TO BE CLEAR, as a Protestant I still had admiration for the two previous Popes in John Paul II and Benedict XVI even if I did not appreciate much of Roman Catholic doctrine. BUT Francis (b. Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was more dedicated to Leftist and Marxist Liberation Theology (SEE HERE & HERE) than the Biblical tenets that Christians call the Word of God.
When Pope Francis experienced a long hospitalized illness in early March 2025, many watchers that I read suspected he would pass in hospitalized care. Amazingly Pope Francis recovered. The illness must have taken a toll on his body because Pope Francis passed to receive Judgment for his anti-Word of God stands at age 88 on April 21, 2025.
I recently posted on Pope Francis’s Marxism: “Looking at the Communist Pope”. Included in that post was a link to The New American on Pope Francis Marxism you should at least glance at:
o Is the Pope a Communist? By William F. Jasper; The New American (Vol. 41, No. 01); 1/13/25
I mentioned I did a search of the passing of Pope Francis. I don’t know if the search results illustrate sympathy for the Pope Francis or yet another indication of the Leftist domination of the MSM. A huge majority of the results produced a favorable character eulogy of Pope Francis. Here’s a Newsmax TV Youtube video on the passing of Pope Francis:
Youtube VIDEO: BREAKING: Pope Francis dead at age 88 | NEWSMAX
Posted by Newsmax
Posted on Apr 21, 2025
For the Roman Catholic faithful the question becomes, “Who will be the next Pope?”
Traditional and Conservative Roman Catholics should be concerned. I believe I have read that in in the Francis Papacy, he purged his voting critics from the selection process for the next Pope. I am uncertain if what I read was hearsay or accuracy.
Below is the best news piece trying to be balanced reporting on Pope Francis’s death from RedState.com.
JRH 4/21/25
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BREAKING: Pope Francis Dead at 88
By streiff
April 21, 2025
Pope Francis - AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia (RedState Photo)
Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at his residence after an extended illness, the Vatican has announced. He was 88. Francis ascended to the Papacy on March 13, 2013, after the unprecedented resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.
Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he was ordained a priest in the Jesuit order in 1969 and served as the head of that order in Argentina until he was made archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998. He was the first Pope elected from outside of Europe since Gregory III in the eighth century and the first ever Jesuit Pope.
The themes Pope Francis chose for his papacy in his initial statements were humility (he shunned the gold pectoral cross typically worn by the Pope in favor of an iron one) and service to the poor. He selected the name Francis in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi to highlight those themes.
To say that Francis's papacy was conflicted is an understatement. He made environmentalism a pillar of his social teaching and devoted a major encyclical to the subject. In retrospect, his ventures into environmental policy and climate change will probably be viewed as unwise as Pope Paul V's opinions on astronomy. He emphasized pastoralism over hide-bound clericalism, which is laudable. Unfortunately, along the way, he muddied a lot of waters concerning homosexuality, divorced and remarried Catholics, and the role of women in the Church that we'd thought definitively settled by Pope John Paul II. His pronouncements on immigration and the death penalty put him in the position of developing doctrines previously foreign to Catholicism. His dislike of the American Catholic Church, orthodox seminarians, and traditional Catholics became legendary.
In Church governance, he never brought the Vatican's finances under control; he appeared to protect some known sexual predators if they were of sufficient status; and most troubling was a still secret treaty with Communist China that placed the selection of bishops in the hands of the Chinese government. His predecessors frequently consecrated Chinese bishops in secret to protect them from their government. Totally predictably, the Chinese responded by appointing bishops without Papal approval, and the Vatican was powerless to intervene. His attempts to open Church governance to the laity produced the confusion his critics predicted.
His efforts at evangelization were also a mixed bag. The number of Catholics increased during his papacy, but the number appears fragile as the number of Catholics attending mass weekly, getting First Communion, going through Confirmation, and being married in the Church all dropped.
There is no doubt that following revered (John Paul II) and beloved (Benedict XVI) Popes cast a shadow over his legacy. The world he inherited did not have the existential threat of the Soviet Union, but it was equally threatened by the rise of militant Islam and modernism that has reduced much of Christendom to a neo-pagan state. How well he responded to the challenges of his time and the degree to which his reforms and theology were accepted will be a subject for historians to debate in the years to come.
[streiff:] Former
infantry officer, CGSC grad and Army Operations Center alumnus. Also an amateur
historian (Colonial America) and a dabbler in historical fiction.
RedState member since 2004. "He would rather pinch off his own head than
admit he's wrong" -- Daily Kos. Follow me on Twitter.
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